Avada Kedavra Eyes
by Magi Silverwolf
Summary: A foolish course of action is sometimes the right one. Not A Romance.


"All I had is gone and all I need seems so far away. Help me. Help me out of here." --Lesiem 'Fortitudo'

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It was odd.

We should hate each other.

He was the perfect Slytherin when we were in school, always keeping to the dungeons despite the chill. I know that he was a master at the Dark Arts as well as potions. He taught me some rather..._captivating_...facts about both through the course of our relationship. His view of muggleborns was stereotypical for his House. Merlin curse it, his favorite color was green! If that is not the last sign of a perfect Slytherin, I don't know what else would be considered.

Besides, he was a Death Eater. By his own admission, he had attacked people like my parents. Their crime? They had not been born with magic. I have long since lost count of the number of times he had screamed that awful insult in my face. I don't care if he was acting as he had been taught was appropriate. It's rude to call someone a 'mudblood' when she tried to help you.

But then, Severus Snape has always been a man of pride and honor. Even when he had nothing else to cling to, he held tight to those two things. As a boy, he had thought honor meant not associating with inferior beings, an ideology helped along, no doubt, by the whisperings of Lucius Malfoy. After he was forced to become a man, he had turned to the least likely of people to teach him goodness. He still claims that he made his choice because of the color of my eyes: Killing Curse green. At least, that is what he named the shade. He has seen it more than I have. He should know.

I can still remember the night he had shown up at my flat. I kept the towel that he used to wipe off the blood from his hands and the tears from his face. I knew that both could come in useful as ingredients for spells or potions. Even for the few illegal curses that I knew at the time can be made more powerful by the use of both...both the blood of a victim and the tears of a executioner. Severus had come to appeal that I kill him.

Sometimes I wonder...does he know how close he came to joining my parents that night?

I had shaken with all the rage of a redheaded witch. A flicker of fire had danced across my soul, leaving only the blissful desire for revenge. As if in contrast of all the Gryffindor red that drenched my world, the tip of my wand had glowed with that telltale green. It would have been fitting, wouldn't it, for a Slytherin to have been killed in the color that had surrounded them from Sorting until Graduation? Then he had bowed before me, swearing that he would bow to my will in all things, that he was ready to die should I wish it.

It was an old custom. If a man killed another in cold blood, he would be turned over to the victim's next of kin for punishment. Until the heir announced that the debt of blood had been repaid, his life--and it was believed, afterlife--did not belong to him. The fact that a purist of at least ten generations was performing it to a muggleborn--a filthy mudblood--spoke volumes of his guilt.

I remember I had stared at him for a moment before doing the only thing a nineteen-year-old who had just had too many emotions hit her at once could do: I ran into my bedroom and slammed the door.

It is a terrible burden, you know, having complete control over the life of another.

On top of my parents' deaths, Petunia refusing to talk to me, and James plotting revenge with Sirius, it had quickly became too much. Dumbledore, however, meddled in other people's lives all the time. I did not hesitate to send him to the Headmaster, as odd as that had seemed. How many times does a former Head Girl send a former prefect to the headmaster?

Later when I had dealt with what I needed to at the time, I went back to Hogwarts and had a long talk with the Potion Master. It seemed that Dumbledore had decided that he did not have a Death Eater in his motley collection of educators. The hours we spent talking then and the hours spent thus since have forged a strange allegiance that bore more than a passing similitude to amity. When I had married James, Severus had been the one to give me away.

It was still odd to see Severus like this.

'This' being in the sunlight of a nursery holding the other being that was dependent upon me for survival.

Logic says that I should never have let him near Harry, let alone allowed him to hold my firstborn son. Logic says that I should have killed him when he said I could--one Death Eater down, how many left to go? Logic says that he was a monster, unforgivable, unlovable. Logic would also be named James Potter who, though I love him dearly, has always hated Severus.

James has also never seen the look of awe rapture on the Slytherin's face. He probably wouldn't care about the way that Severus was holding Harry as if he were made of spun glass. He would not stop to notice the stunned consternation when the three-month-old sleepily opened one eye, then the other, revealing their vibrant color. James could never imagine the painful hope that etched Severus' face as he met my eyes...my eyes of Killing Curse green.

"Why?"

Trust Severus to know the right questions to ask, even if I have no answer for him. How can I explain the ever-growing feeling that I would never see my child grow old? Or that all my contingency plans would be for nothing? Why would a mother choose a confessed murderer as a protector?

Why, indeed?

"Protect him, Severus. Do what you can. That's all I ask of you."

"Why?"

"If anything happens to me...just protect him. If he's anything like me, he'll have enough inquisitiveness to get him into trouble and enough pure dumb luck to see him through."

Severus looked back to the infant now playing with the shadow of a leaf from the oak outside. Death's eyes dancing with laughter and innocence. I could see the cogs working in his mind. The Slytherin in him had to be weighing the odds of survival. The inner Death Eater would be screaming about the chances of advancement. However, I was counting on the whisperer to succeed. The scared little boy that grew old before his time eternally wishing that someone had been there to protect him from all the darkness in the world. Finally, I saw the faint twitch of the lip that was his smile, as much as he could smile, as far as I knew. I closed my eyes in relief. He would do it.

"Curiosity killed the cat, Lily."

"And sometimes, Severus, the stupidest action is the wisest."

'Please, God, let this be one of those times.'


End file.
